A voice communication device, such as including a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) terminal adapter and/or residential gateway, located at a customer premises is typically connected to the Internet broadband service through a high-speed interface, such as the 10 Base-T or 100 Base-T Ethernet interface. The speed of this interface typically exceeds the upstream bandwidth of a broadband connection. A terminal adapter can often classify and prioritize communication packets to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) for voice calls. For example, a terminal adapter can prioritize voice media stream packets over voice control packets over data packets to guarantee QoS for voice calls. However, a device providing broadband access to the terminal adapter, such as a cable or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) modem, typically cannot classify and prioritize communication packets. If a given terminal adapter is not equipped with a transmit traffic shaper, the broadband access device can get overloaded, such that excess packets can be indiscriminately discarded, thus deteriorating QoS for VoIP calls.
A traffic shaper can be more effective if the upstream bandwidth of the broadband connection is known. In general, the end-user of the terminal adapter may not learn the amount of the upstream bandwidth from the Internet Service Provider (ISP), and hence the end-user may be unable to configure this bandwidth in the terminal adapter. In addition, the upstream bandwidth may fluctuate over time due to varying ISP network conditions. Likewise, a hosting Voice Service Provider (VSP) typically does not own the ISP network facilities. As such, the hosting VSP may not know the upstream bandwidth, and thus may not be able to remotely configure the terminal adapter or communicate the upstream bandwidth to the end-user.